Rodney Atkinson says he was 'appalled’ by his brother Rowan’s foul language in
his Comic Relief sketch about the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rowan Atkinson has long campaigned for comics to have the right to make fun of religious faiths — he was strongly opposed to the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 — but more than 2,000 viewers felt that he went too far with his Comic Relief take-off of the Archbishop of Canterbury on BBC One.

Among them, I can disclose, was the comedian’s older brother, Rodney, a 64-year-old academic and political activist who was formerly a merchant banker. He has seldom, if ever, seen fit to breathe a word of criticism of Rowan in public before.

“I was also appalled by Rowan’s sketch portraying the Archbishop of Canterbury demanding 'wonga’ from the masses glued to Red Nose Day,” says Atkinson Snr. “I thought at first it was a comment on the grasping nature of a Church, with many palaces taking from the poor — but, no, it was a bunch of wealthy comedians doing it. The language was pure adolescent Richard Curtis/Ben Elton at their worst — language which Rowan, in his youth, was not too keen on, and which his family always found rather pathetic.”

By way of an afterthought, Atkinson Snr adds: “I have over the years been increasingly put off by the publicly funded BBC using air time to drum up a kind of mass hysteria with well-off 'celebrities’ enticing the all too soft-hearted young, and the less well-off, to use their credit cards to make donations.”

In the sketch, which was broadcast on BBC One on Friday before the watershed at 7.45 pm, Atkinson Jnr appeared dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury — or “Arch” as he styled himself — underlining that he was not homosexual, using the phrase “arsing about” and the word “shagging”, and comparing the pop group One Direction to Jesus’s disciples. “Arch” went on to tell his mock congregation: “Keep on praying — it doesn’t work, but it’s a good part of a getting-to-sleep routine, if you’ve got insomnia.”